COMMITTEE ON THE REVIEW OF PROPOSALS FOR RESEARCH ON STATISTICAL METHODOLOGIES FOR ASSESSING VARIABLES IN EYEWITNESS PERFORMANCE

Recognizing the importance of eyewitness identifications in courts of law and motivated by data showing that at least one erroneous eyewitness identification was associated with almost 75% of cases where defendants were later exonerated by DNA evidence, in 2013 the Laura and John Arnold Foundation asked the National Academy of Sciences to undertake an assessment of the scientific research on eyewitness identification and offer recommendations to improve eyewitness performance. The appointed committee issued its report, Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification, in 2014.

An ad hoc committee under the auspices of the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law and in collaboration with the Board on Mathematical Sciences and their Applications:

1) Developed text for a Request for Proposals (RFP) that addresses Recommendation #11 of the 2014 NRC report, Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification, that called for additional research on system and estimator variables in eyewitness performance. The committee developed criteria to be used in evaluating the scientific merit and research design of proposals submitted to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to further advance understanding of statistical tools appropriate for the validating the reliability of eyewitness performance.

2) Upon receipt of all proposals from the Arnold Foundation, the committee met to evaluate the proposals and ranked them based upon scientific merit and research design.